


The Accidental Emperor (and other related shenanigans)

by evilblubber



Series: The Accidental Emperor (and other related tragedies) [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Armitage Hux Needs to Chill, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Descriptions of gore, Kylo Needs Hugs, M/M, Off-Screen Murder, Techie is the sane brother, This is not a good thing, emperor AU, except maybe not the one you're looking for, it's okay no one we love dies, mentions of gore, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 03:46:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9217184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilblubber/pseuds/evilblubber
Summary: “You’re not aweapon,” says the boy with hair like fire and something ever-hungry in his eyes, hands gripping his shoulders a little too hard, like he’s about to actually shake some sense into him, “you’re--that’s ridiculous, Ren, you’re more than that.”“See, that’s where you’re wrong,” Kylo muttered, looking away becausewhy are they talking about this for kriff’s sake,“I don’t actually have a purpose outside of being Snoke’s---I think "attack dog" would be the best term. It’s what I’mfor, Armie.”“You’re wrong,” Hux said, after a long pause. And it sounded oddly like a promise.(or, the Emperor AU no one expected or asked for)





	

**Author's Note:**

> IT IS FOUR AM AND I HAVE NOT SLEPT IN DAYS AND I HAVE SEEN THE FACE OF GOD. SHE SAYS HELLO.
> 
> ALSO, MEET MY CHILD.
> 
> Note; techie and hux are brothers. there is no Matt yet. I love my knights ok please don't hate them

It doesn’t surprise Techie when a Knight of Ren skids into his quarters in the middle of the night-cycle, hours before shift starts. He’s used to it, by now, and he blames Armitage entirely.

“TECHIE, TECHIE, WAKE THE FUCK UP,” the black wraith in his doorway yells, “ _SO MUCH SHIT HAS GONE DOWN_ OH SHIT---"

(The Knights, Techie has learned, are strange and finicky beings with little understanding of such things as _basic etiquette_ or _the progression of time_ or _sleep._ )

So instead of being surprised, he blinks sleepily and says, “Go to the medbay.”

Desir Ren, second of the Knights, is visible shaking. She looks down at herself, and blinks. “Oh, this isn’t my blood,” she says, indicating her robes, which are soaked in blood. Techie is about to insist on taking her to be checked anyway (because they are all children who insist upon using the Force to heal and he will Not Have That) when she says:

“It’s--it’s kinda the Supreme Leader’s blood.”

He freezes, mouth open.

_What._

 

* * *

 

Here is a secret:

Armie Hux was born starving. The kind of hunger that devours galaxies whole; an aching, gnawing thing that makes his eyes sharper and his smile somewhat unsettling. It drove him to carve out the heart of a world and fill it with the thrumming power of a sun, what drove him to rise and rise and rise in the ranks until he reached what was very nearly the top.

And when he got there, he looked at the man above him and thought, _well, we can’t have that, can we?_

Hunger hunger hunger, a boy that looked at the stars and thought _that will be mine one day_

that killed and clawed and scraped his way to where he is, bloodied and battered and wanting something more. Carved out worlds, carved out his heart, pulled apart suns, stood facing an army in white as he watched  a red light destroy worlds entire

Armie Hux had been starving all his life, but he mellowed with age, you see.

A starved boy that met a thing as feral and terrible as he, painting the starways with blood and dancing around one another in sharp words and kisses with too much teeth and bruises and broken bones and teeth marks etched deep

and softened, melted, thawing from sharp ice into something stranger and somehow wilder, but this time with sweetness and promises and a burning behind his ribs that threatened to devour him whole.

(This, this was a different sort of hunger. 

This hunger was just as dark, just as terrible, and he would still rend galaxies to slake his thirst. But once, he did it because he wanted it for himself, to fill up some empty hollow in his chest, the one that makes him feel emptyemptyempty.

Here, he looks at a boy who compared his freckles to stars, and thinks, _I will lay the galaxy at your feet._ )

All of this means that, aged thirty-two years and four months, Armie Hux stands bathed in the Supreme Leader’s blood, feeling vaguely content.

 

* * *

  
  


They’re running down the hallway, Techie still in his sleepshirt and with his feet bare. Desir’s hair is a matted rat’s nest of blood and sweat, and she’s shaking from exertion. Her boots slip on the floor a few times, still slick with something that is not quite blood.

Oddly, the hallways are empty. No one stares, or asks questions, or stops them.

“What happened to the _plan?_ ” pants Techie, trying to keep up.

(The fact of the matter is that Desir Ren is a woman honed from childhood to be a very effective weapon and Techie has all the leg strength of a wet noodle. He tries not to be upset when she visibly slows herself for him.)

“For once, it was _Hux,_ ” she says, brows furrowed. “We're like, _four months_ ahead of schedule!"

(When they say _Hux,_ they actually mean Armie, despite Techie also being a Hux.)

 

(“You _can’t_ be a Hux,” said Kylo Ren, tilting his head in amusement as he looked down at Techie. He was much less imposing without the mask.

“And why not?” Armie had said, looking at him askance in a way that said _careful with your words here or I will rip your throat out._

“...well, he has a soul, for one thing,” was what Kylo settled on.

Techie had been rather surprised when his brother laughed. It should, he thought, have been a warning of things to come.)

 

“But _why?_ ”He already knows the answer, though.

He already knows the answer, though.

 

* * *

  
  


Here is a secret: 

Kylo Ren has been tired for longer than he can remember.

It’s always been there, even when he was Ben Solo sitting cross-legged and starry-eyed by a Wookie and pestering him for stories. Something bone-deep and aching, buried in his very core. He feels like the galaxy is swarming in his head, stars burning and screaming and living and dying in a cacophony no one else can hear and he can’t stop it and it leaves him feeling very very cold and very very _small._

And so little Ben Solo did what any boy would do when faced with the crippling weight of entire galaxies settled on his little shoulders; he fought it.

(have you ever tried to fight off the cold endless vacuum of space? Have you ever tried to fight off a thing that isn’t real? Have you ever tried clawing the _wrongness_ out of you, only to find that it’s all you have?)

 _Dear me,_ a voice one said in the back of Ben Solo’s head, _aren’t you a bright little thing?_

And Ben Solo, who spent a large part of his life listening to the galaxy murmur to him in his head, did not see anything amiss.

 

(Don’t let strange men who whisper of power and darkness settle in your head, kids. He’ll guide your thoughts and pretend to care, and you’ll end up with a lightsaber that’s as defective as you are, and the blood of your peers dried under your nails for weeks.)

 

Ben became Kylo who was still cold no matter how many layers he wears. He wears a mask because he cannot hide his emotions and he wears gloves because he keeps burning his fingers.

Ben was a lonely boy who didn’t know what to do with the power leaking from his little body. Kylo is a weapon who knows he’s falling apart.  
  
  


(“You’re not a _weapon_ ,” says the boy with hair like fire and something ever-hungry in his eyes, hands gripping his shoulders a little too hard, like he’s about to actually shake some sense into him, “you’re--that’s ridiculous, Ren, you’re more than that.”

“See, that’s where you’re wrong,” Kylo muttered, looking away because _why are they talking about this for kriff’s sake,_ “I don’t actually have a purpose outside of being Snoke’s---I think _attack dog_ would be the best term. It’s what I’m _for,_ Armie.”

And Hux had stared at him for a very long time, and Kylo did not peek in his head because Hux Did Not Like That At All. But he wanted to, very badly, because something seemed to shift in his eyes in that moment.

“You’re wrong,” Hux said, after a long pause. And it sounded oddly like a promise.)

  


Kylo Ren is very tired and he is a weapon, a tool to be used that never quite fit anyone’s mold and is perhaps a cosmic glitch in human skin. Too much power, too little self restraint and the grief of a galaxy.

But no matter how cracked, he is still a tool, and he turned over his own use to Armie. He was, at the least, a kind master. One who gives him little kisses all over his face and strokes his hair and swears to murder his family for hurting him. Nice.

And so he is very put out when Armie does all the murdering that _he_ was supposed to do.

 

* * *

  


They run into Armie’s office, Techie punching in the code with unsteady fingers. He’s sparking with adrenaline, and it takes him three tries to get it right.

The door slides open, and the first thing he sees is Snoke’s head.

“Oh dear,” he says, staring at it. It’s grey and blood-spattered and much smaller than he thought it would be.

Kylo is sprawled on the sofa that Armie bought specifically because the man would walkin in here while he worked and the lie on the floor and immediately go to sleep. He glances over to Techie and Desir lazily, looking somewhat dazed, and says, “I feel light headed.

Armie, seated at his desk, frowns at him.

“Is it the fact that you just had a nearly lifelong Force bond with a very powerful person severed with no warning?” asks Desir, flatly.

(All Techie knows of the Force is that it is perhaps a bit of a bitch.)

Kylo appears to consider it, and says, “...no, that can’t be it.”

“ _What_ happened to the plan?” asks Techie, before the Knights inevitable drag the conversation off-topic.

Kylo Ren looks at Armie, who looks at Kylo Ren. And then Armie turns to Techie and says, “Come inside, and sit down.”

They do that. Desir perches on the arm of the sofa that is essentially Kylo Ren’s bed, and Techie settles in the chair in front of Armie’s desk. Which places him in very close proximity to the severed head.

“Snoke decided that Kylo was _defective_ ,” Armie spits out, without preamble, “and was going to have him removed, like he’s some kind of--”

“--and so you killed him,” Kylo Ren cuts in, scowling, “ _without me!_ ”

“Sorry, buddy,” says Desir Ren, patting him on the head, which leaves smudges of blood behind, “it was kinda a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

  


* * *

  
  


“ _Kylo Ren is...unruly,”_ said the tall, hunched figure of the man that Desir had called Master since she was seventeen, “ _I thought that, after the failure of Starkiller he would be more amenable to further training, but he has drifted back toward the light. He is no longer suitable to be the Master of the Knights of Ren.”_

She wasn’t sure why she was here---why she’d been called here, with Hux, of all people. She glanced at him out the corner of her eye, but he looks as inscrutable as ever.

 _“He must be put down,”_ says Snoke, “ _before he causes any more damage.”_

She thinks she feels her heart actually stutter, then run full speed because _ohshitohshitohshit._ She’s the second of the Knights of Ren, second in command, and she’s here with Hux like Kylo’s usually here with Hux---

\--oh, _hell no_.

 

Hux seems to have similar thoughts, because he says, calmly, “I think the fuck not.”

 

* * *

  


Techie covers his face and sighs. “I’m not going to ask you how you killed him,” he says, resigned, “because I like being able to sleep at night.” 

“Good call,” says Desir.

Armie’s mouth twitches into a smile, and Techie notes that his brother looks exhausted. His uniform is slathered in blood and other fluids Techie doesn’t want to think about, his face and hair smeared liberally with it. But his eyes are fever-bright with the same light that drove him into Techie’s bed at night and said, _what if we used a star for fuel? A whole star, brother, imagine that!_

(Why did it have to be so _gory?_ What did they do, blow him up? Bathe in his blood?)

Then, it strikes him. “Er, this is all very big news,” he says, slowly, “but why am I the first one you called?”

Because even Phasma, Hux’s most trusted officer, isn’t here. Nor are the other Knights.

Armie smiles wider, and Kylo says, “That's. Ah. Funny story, actually.”

 

* * *

  


Here’s how the conversation went:

 

“Why didn’t you tell me of your concerns,” said Hux, “ _before_ I killed your Master in a fit of passion?”

“Because I didn't _know_ you were going to kill my master in a fit of passion,” Kylo replied.

They were both on the floor, because Kylo is the kind of person to get all trembly and teary when his lover gifts him with the head of the man they’ve been plotting to kill together. Hux had his head on his lap, finger carding through his hair slowly. They snagged on the knots and braids, but it still sent something warm sliding down his spine.

“Touché,” Hux murmured, eyes soft, “but I still don’t understand---”

“You’re doing what’s best for the Order, right?”

“...not necessarily,” he said, like it was a confession, “not anymore.”

“But the galaxy deserves a leader that’s civic-minded. Like, you’re an amazing military leader---and engineer, yeah, I know.  And I’m very good at killing people---I _am,_ and you know it. I’m just saying, neither of us would be what’s best for the Order, or the galaxy.”

“We’d do better than Snoke,” muttered Hux.

“...I’m pretty sure that a bantha in a robe could do better than Snoke, actually.”

“So what do you have in mind?”

“Well, we need someone who understands the people, while we handle the military and Force parts of things. Someone to present a reliable face, that inspires trust. That sort of thing.”

“...for someone who just had their mind attacked brutally with the severance of a Force bond, you’re very articulate.”

“I think I’m in shock,” said Kylo, deadpan.

 

* * *

  


“ _No,_ ” says Techie, eyes wide, “ _absolutely_ not, this is a terrible idea.”

“I think it’s a pretty great idea,” says Desir.

“Of course it’s great,” says Kylo, “it’s _mine._ ”

Armie gives them both a Look, and then turns to Techie. He folds his hands on the table, breathes in, and says, “Tiberius, I honestly cannot think of anyone I’d rather have as Emperor.”

“ _Do you hear yourself?”_ he almost-shrieks, “I’m-I’m a technician! A _techie_ , Armie, nothing more!”

“You’re a brilliant tactician, you have an understanding of the workings of the Order that even I lack and you genuinely care for the galaxy,” says Armie, like he’s ticking off a list.

 

(Techie suspects that there was, in fact, a list, and that it was written by Kylo Ren.) 

(Because only Kylo Ren could talk Armie out of taking a throne.)

 

“...are we really doing this?” asks Techie, because he’s more or less resigned himself to it by now.

“Yes,” says Armie.

“Pretty much,” says Kylo Ren.

“Alright,” says Techie, and his head feels heavier already.

 

* * *

 

And thus, Emperor Tiberius Hux, first of his name, came to be.

**Author's Note:**

> and they all lived happily ever after and hux made kylo lounge around a palace wearing flowers in his hair with soft clothes and it was all Good


End file.
